}
Macs are highly productive and performance oriented, suitable for work,
school or just casual use. Macs are famous for their sleek design
pushing the edge of personal computing. It's hardware is made from
highly durable materials with the best componentry available. The
formidable construction houses Apples' best of breed MacOS operating
system.
The question remains though, with all it's attention to design and performance,
'Can I mine with my MacBook or MacBook Pro?'
While it is technically possible to mine Bitcoin on a Mac or MacBook
Pro, sadly it is no longer profitable to do so. There is no denying that
in the distant past it was possible to mine profitably Bitcoin with a
Mac.
~Times, they are a changin!
Bob Dylan
The algorithm that governs Bitcoin hasn't changed since its inception
in 2009, but the growth of this legendary cryptocurrency and it's
processing intensive blockchain has grown exponentially. The constantly
increasing complexity of the calculations involved, along with
phenomenal growth of the network quickly began to outpace the
profitability of mining using typical CPUs.
To answer the traffic demands for processing the influx of
transactions for Bitcoin's blockchain, a new processor architecture
became apparent.
While Macs bring beauty and performance into balance for the end
user, this platform falls far short when it comes to battling the modern
Blockchain. To meet the fearsome task of taming the Bitcoin tiger,
miners rely heavily on ASIC processors to perform the lion's share of
the work required to wrangle each precious Satoshi into their wallets.
Grandpa Bruce, tell me how you mined Bitcoin again. Please!
Well kids, gather around for a bit of a history lesson. Back in my
day, around 2009 enterprising young minds could fire up their laptops,
point it to a mining pool and mine about 50 Bitcoin in a single day.
There were no corporate or government sponsored farms, there was very
little value and only pockets of minor adoption for cryptocurrencies. I
would sit out on my front porch, enjoying a cup of coffee with your
Grandma, Bambi --- boy she was wild! She’d do this one thing --- wait,
sorry. Ok, mining on a laptop with a CPU was great but it only lasted
for awhile, much like my marriage to Bambi.
So a year or so later some developers in the crypto community
discovered that GPUs were much faster at mining Bitcoin than lazy old
generalized CPUs. They could hash 3-4-5x’s the number of Bitcoin in the
same amount of time. It wasn’t long thereafter that yet another
developer discovered that mining could go even faster using FPGA
hardware and that put the dust on the GPU miners. While everyone was
clamoring for more Bitcoin, it was the Chinese manufacturers who brought
about ASIC processor to fit the bill. See kids the ASIC processor was
formed in the heart of a dying star. That gave it more power to crunch
the numbers faster than any of its predecessors.
The ASIC processor was quickly adopted as the de facto standard for
mining and the hashrates would never be the same for Bitcoin. It was in
the land of Terahashes and Petahashes now where the real money was to
be made. The “fuck you” money! The lambo-in-every color money. That
was 2013 and the world would never be the same.
With that little history lesson at the knee of Grandpa Satoshi, we
learn that even today’s most powerful Mac equipped with the latest and
greatest processor can’t even hold a torch to the weakest of profitable
ASIC processors. So what is a small scale miner to do? Where can the
fledgling wanna-be crypto billionaire go to reap the untold fortunes of
the ever changing cryptosphere?
Alt-Coins my boy, Alt-Coins!
There is no doubt that mining can be profitable and fun however, the
startup costs associated with getting into mining can be daunting. This
is most likely why you began reading this article. What can you mine
with your Mac for little to no startup costs? The truth as we’ve
discovered is that mining Bitcoin, while possible is most likely not
going to be at all profitable for you. Luckily, there are still a ton
of alt-coins that you can mine with relatively little effort or
additional expense with your Mac.
If you solely have a Mac and just want to get started mining, I’d
recommend you checkout mining coins using only your CPU power. Coins
like Monero (XMR), Raven(RVN), UPlexa (UPX), XCash (XCASH) or other
coins based on the RandomX, X16R or CryptoNight algorithms. We will
have an article that goes into further detail about these profitable
approaches to mining solely based on CPU power alone. Here to though,
don’t expect to break the bank anytime soon. CPU mining also is a
pay-for-profit endeavor. The newer & faster CPUs you can apply to
your mining operation the better your results will be. Some of the
fastest procs to get the job done are from AMD, although Intel has some
respectable procs that will churn out some coin too. In future articles
we will discuss the use, makes & models of various CPUs for mining.
If you have a bit a cash to start with though and are itching to get
to mining the latest and greatest alt coins, the best route to go would
be GPU mining. GPU mining alt-coins is very profitable especially now
given the price of Ethereum. Graphics cards built for speed like the
NVidia 3090 or the latest RX 6900 XT from AMD can earn a pretty penny
when it comes to mining. A typical 6 card rig will set you back though.
Just to get set up you will need a mining motherboard, a couple of
good PSUs, riser cards and of course, your graphics cards. It is the
author’s opinion that it’s best to also run with a mining operating
system like HiveOS or NiceHashOS. These will streamline your boot time
and specialize your mining efforts for maximum profit. You won’t be
able to game but in the author’s opinion, a specialized box set to the
side dedicated to mining would best serve the need.
In future articles, we will discuss and review specific cards and how
they can be utilized for profit. For now though the key take-aways
from this article are the following:
- Mining is profitable.
- You can start now even with a Mac.
- You can start small and work your way to larger rigs for mining crypto currencies.
If you want to learn more about mining bitcoin on a Mac or MacBook, checkout Crypto Miner Tips! They have a number of mining guides that will jump start your bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining either on a Mac, a Laptop, a GPU Rig or a full blown ASIC, they cover it all.
